Page 2 of The Wrong Billionaire
“Oh, I’m not the one they’ve all come to see. This charity is Caesar’s baby.” Which makes it even more annoying, and puzzling, that he’s vanished.
I look around for a waiter and find one watching me, waiting to see if he’s needed. He comes over as I take the seat opposite Wren, and she lowers back down.
“Another glass of champagne?” I ask her.
“Not sure I should. I haven’t eaten.”
“Another glass,” I tell the waiter. “And I’ll have a Glenlivet on the rocks, please. And can you bring us a plate of appetizers?”
He nods and goes off to the bar.
Wren leans back. “Look at you,” she murmurs. “Such authority. You’ve grown up, Marcus. You’re a man now.” Her eyes sparkle. She’s teasing me.
“I was a man ten years ago,” I remind her.
“You weren’t,” she scoffs. “You were an eighteen-year-old boy. Moody and glowering.” Her gaze skims down me, bringing goose bumps out on my skin. “You’ve filled out.”
The two hours I spend every day at the gym were worth it if she noticed.
“How have you been?” I ask softly. “I didn’t know you were back in the country.” The last I heard, she’d moved to Sydney with her boyfriend.
“I came back in July.” She clears her throat. “Australia didn’t work out.”
“You broke up with Cory?”
She nods and looks out to sea. She’s single? My heart bangs.
The waiter returns, and I hold my reply as he places our drinks on the table, then puts the plate of appetizers between us before retreating.
I lift my glass and hold it toward her. “To summer evenings.”
She smiles and touches her flute to my glass. “Summer evenings.” She sips the champagne and then sighs. “Those beach days felt as if they went on forever that year, didn’t they?”
“An eternal summer, yeah. Shame it had to come to an end.”
“You Ashfords have done incredibly well for yourselves, though.” She gestures up, and I follow her gaze to see the banner above our heads. It reads, ‘A Midsummer Night’s DreamMasquerade,’ in big gold letters. Underneath, in more modest lettering, it says, ‘Hosted by The Ashford Foundation.’
“Your father’s business really took off,” she says.
Ten years ago, Dad had just revealed his new ‘pasture intelligence’ precision farming system. Now, Ashford AgriTech is the global leader in pasture management technology. In a short space of time, we developed a massive multinational agricultural technology empire worth several billion dollars.
“You could say that,” I reply.
“You all work for the company? You, Caesar, and Aurelia?” She names my siblings.
“Yep. Caesar runs the place. Aurelia keeps us from embarrassing ourselves in public.”
Wren leans an elbow on the table and rests her chin on her hand. “And you? What do you do?”
“I’m mostly decorative.”
She giggles, a sound that takes me right back to those fun, lazy afternoons. “Somehow I doubt that’s your entire job,” she scolds.
“You’d be surprised how valuable good looks are in business.”
“Modesty was never your strong point.”
“Hey, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
